I understand the justified criticism of the many dishonest and politically questionable things associated with cryptocurrencies and NFTs. But I don’t remember seeing such a complete dismissal of any tech in this industry before, and I can’t help but feel that’s unjustified
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Sure, there are few use cases, there are many scams, and of course there’s the very questionable energy consumption of the PoW chains. But there are lots of smart folks trying to build legit use cases, using something else than PoW, trying to honestly innovate.
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Many of those orgs are in the same league as your typical ML startup. They may fail, but they’re not all “evil”, and they’re not all stupid. Dismissing everything and everyone uniformly seems just wrong to me.
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Blockchains and smart contracts are technologies with very limited applicability right now. There are good and bad implementations of both platforms and applications. People trying to improve that might succeed, or they might not. (FTR, I’m not one of them.) Time will tell.
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Even the much derided PoW chains have one thing in their favor: They actually work in terms of meeting requirements in terms of not having to trust any single entity, although I’m happy to admit it’s highly questionable whether they do so at a justifiable cost. But they work.
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Admittedly, it’s much easier to just call everyone an idiot or a scammer, and it’s sure going to get you more applause. With some superficial knowledge of how stuff works, you get bonus points for being a socially responsible, critical tech guru, so if that’s your thing …

Jan 5, 2022 · 8:00 PM UTC

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Replying to @stilkov
I have yet to fact check the histical claims, but these arguments look very strong to me. stephendiehl.com/blog/agains…
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My point is they’d be stronger if he added a caveat that what he writes is true for 95% percent of the space and deemed the remaining 5% not relevant enough to matter
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Replying to @stilkov
I think a big reason for the scale of the pushback is the scale of the hype and the “Web3” dystopian view of the future. My comparison in AI would be those pre-crime companies who’ve rightly been called to account.
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Fair comparison, albeit with the restriction that nobody is suggesting that everything about AI/ML is the same kind of crap
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Replying to @stilkov
The people that are calling these out as scams (Especially @/smdiehl) are trying to save people money, and trying to make a case that we're allocating too many smart people on this. Worth a read as well, IMO:
Dave Troy @davetroy
3 Jan 2022
1/There are people who are genuinely trying to talk intelligently about cryptocurrencies, but can’t because they don’t have historical background. This thread tries to correct that by suggesting required reading. First, it’s necessary to know what problem it attempts to solve.
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Especially Stephen Diehl has some excellent arguments, but frustrates me with his absolutist “everyone who does not share this opinion is either stupid or evil” stance
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Replying to @stilkov
You recently shared an article about nuclear energy. I see blockchain in similar light. It does have the potential to improve our life in some areas. However, I feel we missed the chance and now we are left with some small benefits and a lot of dangerous bombs.
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Interesting comparison
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Replying to @stilkov
It's the most effective way to spread the message, which is needed if you want to reset the field or affect legislation
Replying to @stilkov
There may be aspects.of the technology that's useful. My concern is that most people can't distinguish the good from the bad, and when it explodes the blast is going to take the good actors with it.
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